Paper has a rich, colourful history which has spanned the world's
geography and its cultures.
Paper is a part of our everyday lives, but few of us know much about
how it is made. It turns out that making paper is not particularly
difficult, especially if you use old paper scraps as your base. With
a little practise and a few tools, you can learn to make beautiful
homemade papers that can be used for notes, cards or gift wrap.
Paper is made from cellulose (SELL-u-los), which is in plant fibers.
The cellulose is made by cutting down trees and then grinding up
trees and dumping the woodpulp in acid. Not a pretty picture.
Cutting down trees is not good for the planet. But recycling uses
cellulose over and over again. Recycled paper can be made with less
electricity, with less water, with a lot less pollution, and it
saves trees from being cut down. Making recycled paper yourself is
also lots of fun.
When we think of the origins of paper, our minds think of 5000 years
ago to the Nile river valley in Egypt. It was there that a marsh
grass called Cyperous Papyrus flourished. The Egyptians cut thin
strips from the plant's stem and softened them in the muddy waters
of the Nile. These strips were then layered in right angles to form
a kind of mat. The mat was then pounded into a thin sheet and left
in the sun to dry. The resulting sheets were ideal for writing on.
Since they were also lightweight and portable they became the
writing medium of choice of Egyptians, Greeks and Romans for record
keeping, spiritual texts and works of art. It is from papyrus that
the word paper comes from. Although papyrus sheets were similar to
paper in terms of function, being laminated sheets they were
technically more like a mat and therefore not the same as the papers
of today. Similar processes were developed in other lands - in
Central America during the 2nd Century AD the Mayans fashioned a
similar product for bookmaking. In the Pacific Islands, a paper was
made by beating a fine bark over specially shaped logs to make
clothes and ritual objects. However, none of these sheets would
qualify as true paper today.
Paper as we know it today comes from another source - China.
Excavations of tombs of the former Han Dynasty (207BC-9AD) have
revealed silk cloth bearing the texts of Lao Tzu - the father of
Taoism (born in 604BC). In 105 AD, Han Emperor Ho-Ti's chief eunuch
T'sai Lun experimented with a wide variety of materials and refined
the process of macerating the fibre of plants until each filament
was completely separate. The individual fibres were mixed with water
in a large vat. Next, a screen was submerged in the vat and lifted
up through the water,catching the fibers on its surface. When dried,
this thin layer of intertwined fiber became what today we call
paper. T'sai Lun's thin, yet flexible and strong paper with its
fine, smooth surface was known as T'sai Ko-Shi ,
meaning: "Distinguished T'sai's Paper" and he became revered as the
patron saint of papermaking.
It wasn't until the 3rd century that the secret art of papermaking
began to creep out of China, first to Vietnam and then Tibet. It was
introduced in Korea in the 4th century and spread to Japan in 6th.
There, during the 8th century, the Empress Shotuka undertook a
massive project consisting of printing a million prayers - dharani -
on individual sheets of paper, with each mounted in its own pagoda.
With such a profound inception, it is not surprising that the fine
art of papermaking has continued in Japan to this day, garnering
deep appreciation and ever increasing sophistication.
Papermaking spread slowly throughout Asia to Nepal and later to
India. It made its true push westward in 751AD when the Tang Dynasty
was at war with the Islamic world. During a battle on the banks of
the Tarus river, Islamic warriors captured a Chinese caravan which
happened to include several papermakers. They spirited them away to
Samarkand, which soon became a great centre for paper production.
Gradually papermakers made their way further west through the Muslim
world - to Baghdad, Damascus and Cairo. Finally, when the Moors from
North Africa invaded Spain and Portugal they brought the technology
with them and so it was that papermaking entered Europe in the 12th
century.
In Europe, the use of papyrus had dropped out in the 9th century.
The preferred medium for the artists and literati of the time was
the smooth and lustrous parchment. However, parchment - made from
animal skin - was extremely expensive. In fact, it has been
estimated that a single bible hand written on parchment required the
skins of 300 sheep. The notion of paper being used as a practical
everyday item did not occur until the 15th Century. When Johann
Gutenburg perfected movable type and printed his famous bible in
1456, he not only spread the word of Christianity, but also sparked
a revolution in mass communication. The birth of the modern paper
and printing industry is commonly marked from this date.
Printing technology rapidly developed and created an ever increasing
demand for paper. The early European papers were made from recycled
cotton and linen - and a huge trade quickly developed around the
trading of old rags. It is said that the black plague entered
England from Europe on these old rags. Yet soon this source became
insufficient and some curious attempts were made to source new
materials - the most macabre of which was the recycling of Egyptian
mummies to create wrapping paper! Others experimented with fibres
such as straw, cabbage, wasp nests and finally wood, resulted in
inexpensive - and replaceable - materials for paper making. Today,
the long soft fibres of softwoods such as spruce have become the
most suitable source of pulp for mass production.
The demand for paper also created the need for greater efficiency in
production. In the late 18th century the labors of Nicholas Luis
Robert resulted in the creation of a machine that could produce a
seamless length of paper on a endless wire mesh with squeeze rollers
at one end. Perfected and marketed by the Fourdrinier brothers, the
new machine made papers soon replaced traditional single sheets made
by hand. In Europe and America, the mass-production of paper became
a thriving industry supplying huge volumes of paper for the
production of newspapers, books, magazines, paper bags, toilet
paper, money and a huge variety of other purposes - including
clothing, chimney's and even coffins! Today, the increasing volume
of paper consumption has become a complex environmental matter - and
the need for new materials increasingly urgent. While recycling has
done some good, much paper is still wasted.
In the west, as industrial paper production boomed the art of hand
paper-making has been driven nearly to extinction - being practiced
only by a few fine artists and crafts people. However, in small
areas throughout Asia, the tradition has lived on. Incidentally, the
traditional Asian paper which is often referred to as "rice paper"
is not made from rice fibres at all. More commonly it is made from
the versatile mulberry tree - varieties of which are also used for
feeding silkworms and in medicine. In contrast to the cold precision
and standardisation which industrial production demands, the soft,
subtle textures and natural feeling of hand made paper is said to
echo the warm heart of the papermaker who makes each sheet with
devotion.
In Thailand there are records of paper making going back seven
hundred years. Traditional uses of paper have been for Buddhist
texts, temple writings and ritual purposes. It used to be that paper
was made from the inner bark of the Khoi tree Streblus Asper (L.)
Lour. Earlier in the 20th century paper production from Khoi began
to die out because of a shortage of Khoi trees. It was not until the
Japanese occupied the kingdom during the second world war that paper
making again flourished in Thailand. For centuries the Japanese had
been making paper called "Kozo" from the inner bark of the mulberry
tree Broussonetia Papyrifera (L.) Vent. In Thailand the mulberry
tree - known as "sa" - grew in abundance and the Japanese demand for
maps, banknotes and other documents caused sa paper production to
flourish. The mulberry tree is still abundant in Thailand - growing
wild all over the Northern forest and lowland areas - and Thai
artisans continue to produce handmade paper using the same technique
that they have done for centuries. Yet, as international demand for
these products is increasing, new speciality papers are being
developed which incorporate colour dyes, flower petals and other
materials into their design. HQ Group were among the first people in
Thailand to produce sa papers incorporating petals and leaves nearly
ten years ago and our original paper sheet designs using
bougainvillea petals and tamarind leaves, for example, are still
hugely popular internationally
Material List:
Paper scraps (see plan for details regarding paper selection)
Warm water
Cornstarch (sometimes called cornflour - but not cornmeal!)
You will need:
Large bucket or tub
Rigid frame or tools/materials for making one - see below for
details
Standard knife or spoon
Paper towels
Window screen
Metal snips or utility scissors for cutting screen.
To make paper, you will need a frame with an inside dimension
slightly larger than the sheets you plan to make. You can use an old
picture frame or even a standard window screen frame - anything that
will allow you to provide rigidity for the mesh. We found an old
piece of polycarbonate plastic and cut a frame out of it as shown on
the right. This works very well because it is easy to handle. To
create the cutout, we simply drilled four holes in the corners and
then cut the opening with a jigsaw. You can also assemble a frame
using wood slats along with nails or screws. It doesn't have to be
elaborate.
When your frame is finished, you are ready to make the pulp. The
choice of paper is important and the best way to find what works
best is to experiment with different papers and different
combinations. The more fibrous the paper, the easier it will be to
work with and the stronger it will be when you are finished. In
general, paper that is hard to tear will be stronger than flimsier
paper. You can have good success with old manila envelopes,
newspaper and advertisements made out of colored cardstock. To
achieve color sheets, simply use colored paper; you can use printed
color sheets, but they do not provide nearly as much color as actual
colored paper. Separate your selection into piles and tear the paper
into small pieces as shown on the right. Soak the torn paper pieces
for as long as possible to make it easier on your blender; an hour
is fine but overnight is even better. You can potentially also use
food colouring.
Next fill your blender about halfway with warm water and add a few
pieces of your soggy paper until you have achieved the consistency
of lumpy applesauce. If voids of air become created in the mixture,
it's an indication that you need to add more water.
Now you have a sheet of paper but it is wet and on a frame. The
easiest way to proceed is to set the frame in the sun to dry. After
a couple of hours, you will be able to pull the paper easily from
the mesh. The disadvantage is that your frame/mesh will not be
available during that time. The alternative is to remove the wet
paper from the mesh so you can make more sheets without waiting. Cut
out a piece of cardboard slightly larger than the size of the paper
your are making. If you are using binder clips to hold the mesh to
the frame, you can remove the clips and mesh from the frame; at this
point you can set the mesh/paper out to dry or remove the paper from
the mesh alone (its easier to remove the paper from the mesh without
obstruction of the frame). If your mesh is permanently attached to
the frame (like ours) flip the frame over onto the cardboard. Tap
the mesh and wiggle the frame until the paper falls off the frame
onto the cardboard. This can be tricky, but after a few tries, it
becomes easy. Lay the sheet out to dry, preferably in the sun and
when all the water has evaporated: you just made paper! If there are
ridges, you can briefly iron the dry sheets with an ordinary
household iron set on low heat.
The size of your paper will be determined by the size of your frame.
A larger frame, of course, requires a larger tub and is slightly
more difficult to work with. It is recommended starting with a
standard size first before progressing to larger sheets.
The color of your paper is based on the color of your scraps.
Printed color scraps do not provide too much dye for the paper
sheets: you should rely on colored paper scraps to create colored
paper. You can also mix colors to create blends. Another idea is to
add the pulp to the basin with a temporary barrier right in the
middle. Add different color pulps to the two sides and gently remove
the barrier at the last moment before lifting the frame. With some
practise you can create multi-colored paper!
You can also include additional items to your paper. Small visible
pieces of paper add visual interest to the sheets. You can make some
very interesting paper by adding some regular newspaper scraps to
the blender and blending for just a few seconds until there were
pieces as small as a typed letter or two; those letters show up in
the final product and are very unique. You can also add, small
flower petals, flower or vegatable seeds, tiny leaves, dryer lint,
or threads; simply toss them into your basin just before gathering
the pulp with the frame
The other lower cost way: (geared for kids project)
Making recycled paper is messy. It is also a lot of fun. You will
have to use a food processor and an electric iron. It is best to do
this with some friends and family. That way you can spread the mess
and the fun around.
WHAT YOU NEED:
2 full newspaper pages torn into 2-inch squares - food processor - 2
tablespoons white glue (Use Elmers which I believe is more non-tox) -
2 or 3 cups water - sink with 4 inches water - old panty hose -
coat hangers - electric iron
OPTIONAL: insect screen - strainer - food coloring - dryer lint -
(I bring home shredded paper from work ) - vegetable or flower seeds
or petals
STEP #1
You're going to first make the frames that you'll use to make paper
with. Undo the coat hanger and use the wire to make a flat square
about 6 by 6 inches big. Stretch one leg of the panty hose over it.
Take your time; it could snag. If you put tape on the ends of the
wire, it will snag less. Make sure it is tight and flat.
Tie knots in the hose. Use the other leg for another piece of paper.
You will need one frame for every piece of paper you make. You might
want to make more than one or two. Or for more permanent ones, use
window screens you no longer have a use for.
STEP #2
Put a handful of the paper and some water into the food processor.
Close the food processor and turn it on high. Keep adding paper and
water until you have a big gray blob. You may have to add a little
more water to keep things moving smoothly. Keep the food processor
on until all the paper has disappeared. Then leave it on for 2 whole
minutes.
Put the glue in the sink water and add all of the paper pulp you
just made. Mix it really well. Use your hands. (I recommend using a
BIG dishtub or rubbermaid type tub so you dont accidently clog your
drain!!!!)
Mix up the sink water (Rubbermaind tub) again and then scoop the
frame to the bottom of the sink. Lift it real slow. Count to 20
slowly while you are lifting. Let the water drain out for about a
minute. Mix up the sink (tub) every time you make a new piece.
STEP #3
Try other things like the screen or a strainer. Try adding lots of
food coloring, or lint, or leaves, to the food processor.
Now you have to hang the frames on a clothesline or put them out in
the sun. Wait until they are completely dry with no dampness at all.
You Can then gently peel off the paper.
Now use the iron - set on the hottest setting - to steam out your
paper. You Can keep making paper until the pulp is all strained out
of the sink.
See how strong your paper is. Trim it with scissors. Write on it. It
is strong. Make Christmas cards or other cards or writing paper
Don't be fooled. When a bag or a box says that it is 100%
recyclable that means that you can recycle it. It does not mean that
it is made out of recycled paper.
I am not sold on the sink method as it will probably clog your
sink.. use a dishpan or rubbermaid tub
tenzicut - who brought shredded paper from work home for this